Costumed In Resistance

How do you tell it is Halloween when

everyone wears a mask everyday,

would be kings orange aerosol sprays then 

locks children in cages, parents sent away?

How is nightmare different than day?  How 

do we eat sweets while charlatans would steal

American dreams with schemes surreal and bow 

before their debtors, bounties, bone saws?  Real 

tyranny threatens to torture those who 

reside in states designated blue.  Trick 

to divide, dehumanize and devalue,

destroy dissent in a body politic.  

A dystopia begins with a despot.

Costumed in resistance, our vote is our shot.

The Annotation:

I love Halloween. With all the damage from the hurricane I’m still restoring and the important political moment at hand, I haven’t figured out a costume. Usually I’m doing this kind of thing months before. This October, however, all that energy that I would be focusing on decorating and candy and costumes seems so inconsequential when the liberties of our country are all at stake in this election.

I am not a person who normally comes on social media and discusses politics. Social media can be an intimidating place to do that. I’m a person who has suffered a lot of violence in my life, and social media can feel violent at times in these kinds of discussions. So I’ve avoided it.

This year feels different. It’s why I can’t worry about Halloween costumes or taking my eye off the election. We have a political leader in America who has threatened to not follow our electoral processes, who has made us unsafe. He admires dictators because he would like to be one. Fortunately, he is not in a position to make that happen on his own. He still serves in a democracy where we can vote and remove him. And I have never thought the removal of a political officer was as necessary as this.

So my Halloween costume this year is resister. I’ve already voted by mail. I checked every day on the online database until I saw that yesterday my vote had been counted.

Have you voted yet? Please do so. I don’t write a ton of political sonnets but this one felt necessary to me.

Vote.